couldn't stand up, and she gritted her teeth together and crawled toward the bathroom in a tide of blood.
Pulling herself across the tiles, she felt the madness beating in her brain like the wings of ravens. She gripped the edge of the bathtub with crimson fingers and hauled herself over into it. She wrenched on the tap; the showerhead erupted, stabbing her skin with cold water. Then she curled up beneath the flow, her body shivering and convulsing. Her teeth chattered, the blood flowing away down the drain, down the drain, down the drain drain drain…
Bad trip, she thought. Oh… bad fucking trip…
Mary Terror placed her hand against the scars. They had closed up again. The water was no longer red as it flowed away. Flowers were growing from the walls of the shower stall, but they were white and coated with ice. Mary drew her knees up against her chin and shivered in the chill. Dark batlike things spun around in the shower for a moment, and then they were caught in the spray and they, too, went down the drain. Mary offered her face to the water, and it flowed into her eyes, mouth, and through her hair.
She turned off the tap and sat in the tub. Her teeth clicked like dice. I'm all right, she told herself. Coming out of it now. I'm all right. The flowers on the walls were wilting, and after a while they fluttered down into the tub around her and vanished like soap bubbles. She closed her eyes and thought of her new baby, waiting in the closet to be born. What would she name him? Jack, she decided. There had been many Jacks, and many Jims, Robbys, Rays, and Johns, after God and his band. This one would be the best Jack of all, and look just like his old man.
When she could, she stood up. Still shaky. Hold on, wait a minute. She got out of the tub, pulled a towel off the rack, and dried herself. Little squiggly things squirmed on the bathroom's walls like Day-Glo paisley amoebas. She was coming out of it, though, and she was going to be all right. She staggered into the bedroom, feeling her way along the wall. The music had stopped, and the needle was ticking against the record's label. Who was that sprawled in the bed? She knew his name, but it wouldn't come to her. Something with a G. Oh, right: Gordie. Her brain felt fried, and she could feel the little quivers of nerves and muscles in her face. The inside of her mouth tasted ratty. She walked toward the kitchen, her hands clinging to the walls and her knees still in jeopardy of folding, but she made it without going down.
In the kitchen, her vision began to go dark around the edges, as if she were peering into a tunnel. She opened the freezer and rubbed her face and eye sockets with ice cubes, and slowly her vision cleared up again. She got a beer from the fridge, popped the tab, and took a long, deep drink. Zigzagged blue and red lightning bolts played around her for a few seconds, as if she were standing at the center of a laser show. Then they faded, and Mary finished her beer and put the can aside. She felt the scars on her belly. Still stitched up tight, but damn, that had scared the hell out of her. It had happened a couple of times before, during other bad trips, and it always seemed so real even when she knew it wasn't. She missed her baby. It was time to get Gordie out of here so she could give birth.
The Rolling Stone was still on the countertop where she'd left it, the Bangles on its cover. She got the last beer from the fridge and started in on it, her mouth like a dustbowl. Then, by force of habit, Mary turned to the classified ads section at the back of the Stone. She looked at what was for sale: Bon Jovi T-shirts, Wayfarer sunglasses, Spuds MacKenzie posters, Max Headroom masks, and the like. Her gaze ticked to the section of personal messages.
We Love You, Robert Palmer. Linda and Terri, Your Greatest fans.
Need Ride, Amherst MA. to Ft. Lauderdale FL. 2/9, willing to share all expenses. Call after 6 p.m. 413-555- 1292, Greg.
Hi, Chowderhead!
Looking for Foxy Denise. Met you at the Metallica concert 12/28. Where'd you go? Joey, Box 101B, Newport Beach, CA.
Long Live the Rough Riders! See, we said we'd do it!
Happy Birthday, Liza! I Love You!
Mr. Mojo has risen. The lady is –
Mary stopped reading. Her throat tightened, her mouth full of beer. Swallowing was a major effort. She got the beer down, and then her eyes went back to the beginning of the message.
Mr. Mojo has risen. The lady is still weeping. Does anybody remember? Meet me there. 2/18, 1400.
She stared at the last four numbers. Fourteen hundred. Military time. Two in the afternoon, the eighteenth of February. She read the message again, and a third time. The Mr. Mojo was a reference to Jim Morrison, from a line in a song called 'L.A. Woman.' The weeping lady was –
It had to be. It had to be.
She thought maybe the acid was still freaking her mind, and she went to the fridge, got a handful of ice cubes, and bathed her face again. She was trembling, not only from the cold, when she looked at the Stone once more. The message had not changed. Mr. Mojo. The weeping lady. Does anybody –
'I remember,' Mary Terror whispered.
Gordie opened his eyes to a shadow standing over him. 'Whazzit?' he said, his mouth moving on rusted hinges.
'Get out.'
'Huh? I'm tryin' to -'
'Get out.'
He blinked. Ginger was standing beside the bed, staring down at him. She was naked, a mountain of flesh. Big ol' baggy tits, Gordie thought. He smiled, his brain still full of flowers, and reached up for one of her breasts. Her hand caught his, and held it like a bird in a trap.
'I want you gone,' the woman said. 'Right now.'
'What time is it? Whoa, my head's spinnin'!'
'It's almost ten-thirty. Come on, Gordie, get up. I mean it, man.'
'Hey, what's the rush?' He tried to pull his hand free, but the woman's fingers tightened. The force of her grip was beginning to scare him. 'You gonna break my hand, or what?'
She let him go and stepped back. Sometimes her strength got away from her, and this would not be a good time for that to happen. 'Sorry,' she said. 'But you'll have to go. I like to sleep alone.'
'My eyeballs are fried.' Gordie pressed his palms into the sockets and rubbed them. Stars and pinwheels exploded in the darkness. 'Man, that shit's got a kick, don't it?'
'I've had stronger.' Mary picked up Gordie's clothes and dumped them on the bed beside him. 'Get dressed. Come on, move it!'
Gordie grinned at her, slack-lipped and red-eyed. 'You been in the army or somethin'?'
'Or something,' she answered. 'Don't go back to sleep.' She waited until he'd shrugged into his shin and had started buttoning it before she put on her robe and returned to the kitchen. Her eyes took in the message once again, and her heart pounded in her chest. No one could've written this but a Storm Fronter. No one knew about the weeping lady but the Storm Front's inner circle: ten people of which five had been executed by the pigs, one had been killed in a riot at Attica, and the other three were – like her – fugitives without a country. The names and faces reeled through her mind as she stared at the black words on paper as if looking through a keyhole into the past: Bedelia Morse, Gary Leister, CinCin Omara, James Xavier Toombs, Akitta Washington, Janette Snowden, Sancho Clemenza, Edward Fordyce, and the Commander, Jack Gardiner, 'Lord Jack.' She knew who had died by the pig bullet and who still held to the underground faith, but who had written this message? She opened a drawer and fumbled around, searching for a calendar she'd gotten in the mail as a promotion from a furniture store. She found it, the days one white square after another. Today was the twenty-third of January. Thirty-one days in this month. Eight days to go. Meet me there. 2/18, 1400. She couldn't count right, the acid and her own excitement were screwing her up. Calm down, calm down. Her palms were slick. Twenty-six days before the meeting. Twenty-six. Twenty-six. She intoned it aloud, a soothing mantra but a mantra that was also ripe with dangerous possibilities. It could be Jack himself, calling the last of the Storm Front together again. She could see him in her mind, his blond hair wild in the wind and his eyes gleaming with righteous fire, Molotov cocktails gripped in both hands and a gunbelt around his waist. It could be Jack, calling for her. Calling, calling…
She would answer. She would walk through hell to kiss his hand, and nothing would stop her from answering his summons.
She loved him. He was her heart, ripped away like the baby she'd been carrying for him had been ripped from her womb. He was her heart, and without him she was an empty shell.
